Running On Empty
by unforth
Summary: Dean was 17 when he took to the road, not sure what he was running from, or where he was running to, just that he needed to run. Dean was 21 when he realized the road had become home. Now Dean's 32, and he's got no clear idea where he's going, only that he has to keep moving.
1. Houndstooth

A few months ago I read the Laundromat 'verse by OzoneCologne and thought it was excellent. Jump to early May, when I put out the Coach Benny short, and I got to thinking: how could I continue to write when I had limited writing time? That's when I started this story, with the thought that I could write something episodic on my phone, have it be in snippets that it wouldn't be a big deal if my phone ate a chunk of it (I lost hours of work to my phone being stupid last year so I'm really paranoid about that...).

Meanwhile, I've always wanted to write a sci-fi verse. I've read...none? Nothing long, anyway.

So, this is the plan: this is my "I don't actually have time to write" story. I'm going to write it in short chapters, only on my phone at times when I'm not ABLE to do other writing. I have no idea how often stories will come out or anything, but here's the first snippet, and the rest will happen when it happens. I have only a vague idea where things are going...but I do have a vague idea...

* * *

"That's not the price we agreed on," Dean said with false calm, trying to keep his indignation under wraps. He didn't even give much of a shit about the double cross - he expected it from a low life like Crowley - but he needed the fucking money to keep his ship in the sky.

"Well, it's what you're getting," said Crowley, lips curling into a smug smile as he continued, "unless you think anyone else on this intergalactic slag heap will buy your rubbish merchandise?"

Fuck. That's why Crowley wanted to meet on fucking Houndstooth. Charlie had said it sounded fishy and Dean was the fricken idiot who ignored her and now he had 100 gross of self-sealing stem bolts, another cargo lined up to fill his holds, and no hope of finding another buyer. Crowley's new offering price wouldn't enable Dean to break even, much less turn a profit. Fuckity fucking fucksticks.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Winchester," Crowley smirked, correctly interpreting Dean's silence as a concession of defeat. "Please have your helper monkeys deliver my stem bolts to the cargo hold of the King of Hell." Most fucking pretentious name for a ship ever.

"You know by screwing me over you guarantee we're never doing business again," Dean muttered. He didn't sound petulant. Dean mother fucking Winchester did not do petulant.

"Of course we won't," sneered Crowley, tone making it clear that he thought nothing of the kind. The asshole clearly thought that Dean was desperate enough that he'd come crawling back next time Crowley called.

The asshole was almost certainly right.

Grinding his teeth, Dean didn't dignify Crowley with a goodbye, turning on a heel and walking out of the bar, suitcase of payment in hand. Benny stood outside, watching across the street where a neon sign promised dancing girls from 20 different species. He started and grinned sheepishly when Dean nudged him to attentiveness.

"Hey, brother, all done?"

"Yeah," Dean replied sourly.

"Does that mean we can leave this shit hole?" Benny managed to sound disappointed at the prospect.

"No such luck," grumbled Dean. "Crowley fucked me."

"I thought you broke up with him years ago," said Benny, frowning.

"Ha. Ha ha ha. You're a real fucking comedian," Dean snapped angrily. Benny broke into a renewed smile, proud of his bullshit sense of humor. "Come on, helper monkey, let's get his shit bolts transferred to his shit ship so we can figure out a way to get out of this shit hole."

"Mixing me up with the humans again?" Benny said with a toothy grin. "Unlike you mammals I'm not evolved from a tree dweller."

"Trust me, even if I wanted to forget the hundred bags of blood in the ships fridge are a constant, disgusting reminder," Dean said wryly.

"If they gross you out-"

"We've been over this, Benny. You can't suck the crews' blood," snapped Dean.

"The scars on your neck say otherwise," smirked Benny.

"Benny..." Dean said warningly. He and Benny had fun once upon a time but it was over now; Dean couldn't risk passing out from blood loss on the bridge again, and Benny didn't enjoy sex that didn't involve blood play. He wasn't sorry he'd given it a try, even if it had proved to not be his "thing." There were so many species and so many ways to be intimate, Dean had never seen any point in restricting himself to his fellow monkey descendants.

"I know, brother, I know - s'all good."

As they spoke, they walked through the bustling streets of the port. Houndstooth was the ass-end of forever, low on regulations, high on corruption. When Dean didn't visit for a while he missed the ease of doing business in a place where no one gave a shit what anyone else did as long as everyone minded their own fucking business. That nostalgia usually lasted until about ten minutes after arriving, by which time Dean had needed to bribe a half dozen different officials just to clear the laughable excuse of an inspection that passed as customs. It was harder to do business on the Central Planets but at least he didn't have to buy off the same douche bags over and over. If this were Lawrence or Sioux Falls or Lexington, Crowley could never have gotten away with his double cross because they'd have had a fucking contract.

It was a moot fucking point regardless. There was a warrant out for Dean's arrest in the Central Worlds. He couldn't go back.

A rowdy bar fight spilled out into the streets. A furtive rugarou thrust a purse in his direction and chirped "copy handbag?" A pawn shop's glowing holographic sign promised the best price for gold in the sector. A woman slumped on the sidewalk bearing a sign claiming she was an experienced long haul shipper looking for work, a berth on a ship to take her anywhere else in the universe. The sound of laughter spilled out of the open windows of a gaudily painted flop house. The streets teemed with the crewmen and crewwomen and crew-gender-indeterminate of every ship docked at the city, crowding the asphalt streets so densely that the anti-grav trucks that moved the majority of the local cargo could scarce make headway. Houndstooth produced nothing of its own; it was a way point, a cross roads for a number of Consortium trade routes and a base of operations for the pirates who preyed on legitimate intergalactic trade. Every single grain of rice, every nail, every rock, every drop of water had to be imported, and there was hardly a person there who wasn't merely a visiting transient.

The Impala was berthed at one of the nicer space docks in the asteroid colony: clean, well maintained, expensive and - most importantly - secure. The last time Dean had come to Houndstooth, some jackass had broken in and siphoned off his fuel right after he refilled it. The premium spot was worth it to prevent that happening again.

Fuck, why did he decide to return to this dung heap? Never again.

"Um..." A tall, human-appearing, male-appearing person seemed to be torn between getting Dean's attention and disappearing into the concrete stonework behind him. Though he was obviously broad and built, he was hunched in a ratty trench coat, slumped to minimize his appearance, clearly determined to draw as little attention to himself as possible.

"Not interested, buddy," said Dean dismissively, not taking the bait. Whatever pitch the wallflower had in store for him, Dean wasn't interested.

With a flinch and a grimace, the man looked up and Dean was arrested by inhumanly bright blue eyes and a desperate, pleading expression on a face that would be handsome were it not so gaunt and overgrown with a patchy beard. "Please." The stranger's voice was low, rough, quiet, and intense. "I can pay."

"Oh," Dean said dumbly. He broke into a smile. "Now you're talking my language. What can I do for you?"

"I need to get off the planet, no questions asked."

"No questions asked is my middle name," joked Dean.

"Really?" the man looked intensely confused. Benny laughed uproariously, and that confused look was turned towards him.

"What the fuck kind of name would that be?" Dean grinned. Leaning in conspiratorially, he said, "it's Michael."

"Come on, brother, we've got work to do," Benny said. "I'm not carryin' all the bolts so you can flirt with tall, dark, and likely to get us arrested."

"Please!" the man implored, stepping out of the shadows. Though Dean couldn't have put his finger on why, he could feel the distress oozing from the man, sense it in his dilapidated, neglected appearance and the sad cast of his eyes.

"Where are you tryin' to go, stranger?" Dean asked, warily curious.

"Dean..."

"Anywhere. Anywhere but here. I have money," the man fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a credit chip. "Is 50,000 credits enough?"

Benny whistled, eyes going wide, and Dean goggled at the humanoid. It was a ludicrous sum, more than Crowley was paying for his fucking stem bolts. Every sensible part of Dean screamed that this was a terrible idea, but Dean kept cycling back to the simple fact that he and his crew were grounded on this forsaken slag rock unless Dean could come up with some money, and fast. The longer they stayed, the more fees and bribes would accrue and the more fucked they'd be. Experience had taught Dean that a deal too good to be true certainly was. Yet, there was something about this person that drew Dean.

"Why me?" Dean asked after an unreasonably long silence that had Benny bouncing impatiently on his heels.

"Tell me you're not seriously considerin' this!" Benny erupted.

"You feel it, don't you?" whispered the stranger urgently. "Please. It has to be you. This is hell and you're my only way out."

Nodding slowly, wondering what exactly he was agreeing to, _why_ he was agreeing to it, Dean held out his hand. "You've got yourself a deal...?"

"Call me Cas." The man's shoulders slumped in relief as he shook Dean's hand with a strong grip.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Cas. If you'll just follow us, I have a feeling you'd like to get out of the street."

"Thank you - thank you so much - I can't thank you enough."

"Yeah you can - about 50,000 times, by my count." Dean grinned. Snap decision made, and he felt damn good about it. Every once and a while he got a hunch like this and they hadn't steered him wrong yet.

Except the time he'd ended up in prison on Baltimore. Or the time the lucrative mystery cargo had turned out to be rare fruits from Burkittsville that rotted to nothing halfway through the journey, his profits decomposing to stink up his holds for months. And then there was the gig that was the reason Sammy _still_ wasn't talking to him.

But aside from those times...and maybe one or two others...Dean's instincts had never steered him wrong. Waving off Benny's incredulous look with a dismissive flick of the wrist, Dean gestured with his other hand for Cas to follow.

"Welcome aboard the Impala, Cas. You just let me know if there's anything - anything at all - I can do for you."

Cas stared at him with blank incomprehension of the innuendo. Benny rolled his eyes. And Dean felt the first twinge that hinted he might have another regret to add to his list.

Well, at least none of those times was ever boring.

* * *

No idea when I'll write more of this, I'm just screwing around really...


	2. Trinity

Dean's knuckles rapped dully on the thick metal bulk head. When the Impala had been built, there had only been a communal room for the crew berths, shared by everyone, but Dean got fucking fed up walking in on Benny having sex, Charlie having sex, Jo having sex, and he didn't even fucking know _what_ Bobby was doing that one time and he didn't want to know.

(And, he had to admit, being interrupted mid-coitus during his own escapades has been really fricken annoying too.)

So now the one large chamber was subdivided into nearly a dozen tiny rooms, enough to house the crew and a few to spare for passengers.

"Cas, you in there?" Dean called loudly enough to be heard through the thick metal. Try as he might he hadn't been able to get the added walls thick enough to suppress sound, but hearing everyone's misadventures was less disgusting than walking in on them.

There was no answer.

Cas _had_ to be in there. Weird ass dude had come aboard, declined Dean's offer of a tour and insisted on being taken directly to his quarters. He hadn't emerged since. It had been a week. Whatever the fuck type of non-human Cas was, he apparently didn't need to eat. Or shit.

Dean pounded on the door. "Look buddy, don't know if the ship's comm unit in there is busted or some shit but this is it, your last, last, _last_ call for Trinity. You wanted to planet hop, then this is your stop."

"You didn't tell me you were going to Trinity," came Cas' voice, dull and flat, through the door.

"Not my fucking problem. You pays your money, you takes your chances."

"That doesn't make sense," said Cas grouchily. "I'm not debarking here."

"Tough nuggies," Dean said. "You paid for one ride. You leave voluntarily or we make you. But either way you're leaving."

The door whooshed open. Cas stood in the doorway, somehow managing to loom even though Dean had several inches on him. Dean had forgotten that the scruffy man had such broad shoulders, had forgotten how dark the shadow of stubble was over his cheeks, had forgotten the way his blue eyes fucking glowed and betrayed that however human Cas might look, he definitely wasn't. Dean took an inadvertent step back, swallowing.

 _He's kinda hot like that._

 _Dammit libido what the fuck is your problem? This is not the fricken moment._

"Captain Winchester, are you threatening me?" Cas asked quietly, voice rough and deep, expression terrifying.

Yeah, no, fuck, Dean was definitely turned on. Cas could probably tear him limb from limb and that should not be hot but God _damn_ was thinking about it doing illegal things to Dean. _Well, they're illegal on Trinity, anyway, fuckin' hidebound planet full of douche bags and their Angels…can't blame a guy for not wanting to stay here…couldn't fuckin' pay me enough to stay here…_ "Ride's over. Don't care where you go but you can't stay here."

"I paid you enough to carry me across half the known galaxy," Cas said. "Are you truly that extortionate?"

"Yes."

"I see." Though Cas' expression remained hard, Dean saw a flicker of disappointment in those captivating eyes. "In that case, I'm afraid you will have to give me a demonstration of how you believe you can force me to leave." Cas planted his feet, squared his shoulders, wrapped his hands around the sides of the doorframe, and _stared_.

Involuntarily, Dean flinched from that flinty, glimmering gaze. Cas' eyes were hard as ice, blue as the ocean, cold as fuckin' Cassie's heart. Determined not to be intimidated on his own fricken ship, Dean forced himself to look, forced himself to meet that gaze, forced his lips into a thin, disapproving line and his own eyes to what he hoped was matching hardness. He opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again.

 _Aw, shit…what the fuck can I_ say _to that?_

The silence stretched out. From the corner of his eye, Dean caught a glimpse of someone moving, a flash of red, a broad smile – probably Charlie – and ignored her, instead doing his best to continue his battle of wills. It was an effort, though; Cas was a surprisingly intimidating mofo when he wanted to be, and Dean wasn't sure if the guy even realized they were _in_ a battle.

"Ready to go, Captain!" chirped Charlie cheerfully.

"Not now, Charlie," Dean growled under his breath. Cas quirked an eyebrow at him. Somehow, even _that_ promised imminent violence.

"You hear me, Dean-o?" she asked brightly, oblivious. "The Impala is all good to set sail – take to the open seas – brave the vast unknown – explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations – boldly go blah blah blah, the whole spiel." When Dean didn't answer, she continued, "Captain?" and waved a hand between their faces.

"A little busy here," Dean snarled.

"Oh, hey, you must be Cas," she went on happily, thrusting the hand towards Cas. "My name is Charlie, computer specialist, I program the auto-pilot and do all the ship automation and generally make sure that, everything the computers do, they do at peak efficiency. Pleased to meetcha!" Cas didn't react beyond quirking his eyebrow even further and tilting his head, a gesture that made him look surprisingly like an overgrown puppy (and _great_ now Dean missed having a fucking dog but there was no way to ship train one not to shit in awkward places…Dean had tried…). Rolling her eyes, Charlie seized Cas' hand. "This is a human thing. We shake hands when we meet. Like this!" She demonstrated. The wind seemed to go out of Cas' sails, his shoulders slumped, and he looked at her with bafflement. "I'm so glad I got to meet you before you debarked!"

"I'm not leaving," said Cas, confusion overlaying his attempt at icy calm.

"Oh, spiffy! In that case we'll have some more time to get to know each other! You should come down to the mess for dinner sometimes – we take turns cooking – tonight is Bobby and dude that's a total must miss but tomorrow is Benny and even though he doesn't eat human food he makes a _wicked_ Jambalaya. Like, literally, I think it might be wicked and the ingredients are probably illegal on several worlds – including this one come to think – but it tastes damn good. Wait, do you even eat? You should give a try sometime, food is awesome." She said it all in a rush, shaking Cas' hand the whole time, and when she was done she turned to Dean. "Ready to go, Cap?"

"Yeah," Dean muttered, disgruntled, turning away from Cas. "Fuck it, yeah, whatever. Cas, next stop is Lebanon, we can figure shit out when we get there."

"Thank you, Dean." Without any further acknowledgement, without saying a word to Charlie, Cas turned back into his quarters, the automatic door shutting behind him and clicking as the lock engaged.

"What the fuck was that all about?" asked Charlie blankly.

"Damned if I know."

"Maybe damned if you don't, too. That one's got trouble written on his forehead, and in his eyes, and in that sex hair, and…oh come on, don't give me that look, I know just how you stiffen up when you see someone whose brains you want to fuck out…oh, ew, I didn't mean…stiffen…I meant…like…you're really fuckin' _tense_ …not…just…you know what I mean!"

"You're stiff," he grumbled.

"Ew, Dean. Just, seriously fuckin' ew."

"Come on, let's get this rust bucket in the sky. Maybe we can find one of those new civilizations you were blathering on about."

"Hey, Star Trek is a _classic_."

"Fuck that, TNG is over-rated, give me DS9 any day."

"Good God you're a heathen, why do I follow your lead _anywhere_?"

"Because I have great hair."

"Yeah, you do. Bastard."


	3. Shore Leave, Part 1

Scowling at his reflection, Bobby slathered his hair with another palm full of pomade. He wore his damned fool hat so damn often his hair was permanently flattened to his head, it was fricken embarrassing.

"Hey, Bobby," said that fool boy of a Captain.

"Mornin', idjit," Bobby spat indifferently. With one last swipe at the errant strands, Bobby gave up with a sigh. There was a splatter of piss hitting water as Dean hit the head in a stall behind him. Doing his damnedest to ignore it, Bobby washed his hands and turned his attention to his tie, straightening his neck to give himself space to work. The bathroom stall door slammed open, sound reverberating as the flush whooshed away the waste. Dean's reflection in the mirror came up beside Bobby, eyes lowered obliviously at the sink.

"Thinkin' of given Cas a job," Dean commented idly. At least the idjit was washing his hands. Bobby shrugged indifferently. He hadn't even met their passenger yet. Supposedly Cas had come to jambalaya night but Bobby always skipped Benny's cooking nights. All that Cajun nonsense gave him heartburn something fierce.

"Thought he was leavin' us at Lebanon," said Bobby, giving his tie one last tweak.

"Thought so too, but last I saw him, he asked 'bout staying long term," Dean fastidiously squeezed a large dollop of soap on his hands and scrubbed them vigorously under the lousy water flow that was the best the ship's plumbing could manage. One of these days Bobby'd install some damned pumps to give them some actual damn water pressure when they were in zero g. "Told him he can think about shit all he wants, that's his call, but if he was gonna stay he'd either have to keep payin' his passage or find somethin' useful to do with himself. And he said," Dean cleared his throat and said in a ridiculous low, harsh voice, " 'I'll think about it.' And slammed the fricken door in my face _again_." Dean turned and surreptitiously wiped his hands on the front of his unbuttoned flannel shirt. "I swear to fucking God if that douche bag doesn't learn some fucking manners I'll—" He broke off abruptly, choking on nothing. "Bobby, are you wearing a fuckin' suit? And what the fuck died in your hair?"

"Gee, ain't you just the sweetest," Bobby replied sarcastically. "Don't worry, I'm not tryin' to impress your bisexual ass."

"I'm pan," Dean corrected. He stared through Bobby, lost in thought, and then a smile spread wide over his face as understanding washed over him. "Haven't been to Lebanon in a while, have we..." He trailed off leadingly.

Bobby refused to take the fucking bait. "You got somethin' to say, boy?"

"Oh, nothin'," a roguish grin overtook Dean's face, his green eyes fricken _twinkling_. Lucky-ass charismatic dick heads and their fuckin' _eyes_ and their fuckin' _hair_. At Bobby's age he had to work at this shit. Dean'd understand some day. "Don't let her chase you through the streets in your boxers this time, though. I haven't got the funds to bail you out for public indecency again."

"Shut it, you idjit," grumble Bobby.

"It _was_ kinda insult to injury when she arrested you..."

Insult and injury had nothin' to do with it. Sheriff Mills had known exactly what she was doin', and she had handcuffed Bobby to the jail cell door and given him the damned night of his life before Dean's lazy, cheap ass ever got there.

What the boy didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"I said shut it," Bobby repeated without any fire behind the words, lips twitching in to a secretive smile as he reflected on that night. This was their first time back to Lebanon since then, and Bobby had high hopes.


	4. Shore Leave, Part 2

"Jo, you ready to go?" Charlie called, using a wrench to whack at the thin bulkhead that separated their rooms. In theory, all bulkheads in the ship should be thick enough that, if one were penetrated and became subject to vacuum, the rest of the ship wouldn't lose pressurization. In practice, if the air in one compartment was evacuated, the Impala was as fucked as the Titanic.

"Why can't you knock like a normal person?" The wall dulled Jo's voice but it was still audible. It would be easy to condemn Dean for doing a cut-rate, shit job dividing up the holds in to rooms, but Charlie shouldn't throw stones since she was the one who'd actually built the damn things, with help from Bobby. Sure, Dean hadn't given them much money to work with, but something something glass houses.

"Cause if I knock, you might answer, and if you answer, then I'll see you, and if I see you before you're ready, it'll spoil the surprise." Charlie lay back in her bed, knees up, legs crossed, tinging at the wall beside her with the wrench. Idly, she wondered what Jo would wear. She hoped it'd be the red dress. The red dress was fricken amazing.

"You know you're ridiculous, right?" Jo's rolled eyes could have punctured the wall.

"You know you love it," Charlie called back unthinkingly.

 _…_ _oh no…_

Dead silence fell between them.

 _…_ _not the L-word…_

The ship was never _actually_ quiet. Even docked at Lebanon, the engines weren't powered down lest they never ignite again and the dull hum of them rattled through the whole vessel, causing a faint vibration that tingled flesh and caused anything small and unsecured to buzz or clatter. An antique clock Charlie had inherited from her mother ticked softly, time inaccurate, where it sat amidst the clutter of her desk. The life support system hissed out purified air, shunting the carbon dioxide out, enriching the air with oxygen from the compressed O2 tanks in the hold. Papers rustled on Charlie's desk. Jo made fun of her for having things on printed paper – "think of the _trees_ , Charlie, have you ever even _seen_ a real tree and here you are killing them just to indulge your nostalgia!" – but Charlie liked the crisp white sheets, liked the way they felt, liked the way they looked haphazardly strewn about. A sudden banging echoed through the hold, the water hammer that went off every time someone used the sink in the unisex bathroom they all shared. Bobby swore he'd fix the fucking thing but…

… _shit why did I say that?_

"Jo?" she asked tentatively. A faint susurration shifted frequency as somewhere, something depressurized, and Charlie swallowed habitually to pop her ears. That was the only reason. She wasn't nervous. She wasn't freaking out.

 _Why do I always say that stupidest shit?_

"I'm ready, Charlie," Jo said, tone unreadable. Grimacing, eyes drawn narrow with concern, Charlie got up, hit the button to open her door, and walked the scant steps down the hallway to Jo's door. She pressed the doorbell, unsure why Jo wasn't waiting for her outside. The door whooshed open, Charlie got a glimpse of acres of pale skin and brightly colored lace, and then powerful hands grabbed the two sides of her vest, dragged her into the room, the door shut with a clang, and lips met hers passionately. With a happy sigh, Charlie's worries vanished; she wrapped an arm around her girlfriend's shoulders and tried to pull her close, but Jo backed away. She was wearing nothing but a delicate bra and panties in bright red; her lipstick was smeared from their kisses.

"Thought you said you were ready," said Charlie with a roguish grin and an assessing look up and down Jo's slim, beautiful body.

"I am," Jo replied, smirking. "We're staying in tonight."

"But the reservations—"

"—can wait. Because you're right. I _do_ love it. I love you, Charlie." Hands wrapped around Charlie's shoulders, strong arms pulled her close, Jo's perfect breasts pressed into Charlie's chest, and all objections flew away. Charlie had needed to hack the Goddamn restaurant Point of Sale system in order to get them a table at the nicest restaurant in Lebanon colony – and to log in a stolen credit card to pay for the meal, cause fuck all if _she_ could afford it – but it didn't matter.

"I love you too, Jo," she whispered back. Jo laughed, a full throated, beautiful sound, and tucked one of her knees between Charlie's thighs. "I love you. I love you!"

"Say it a little louder, I bet Kevin couldn't hear you from engineering."

"I love you!" Charlie shouted as questing fingers slipped under her shirt and kneaded across her belly.

She didn't give a shit who heard. Let them all know. She was in love with Jo Harvelle, and Jo Harvelle was in love with her, and life was _perfect_.


End file.
